Within hours of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan,
cyber-criminals had poisoned search results based on the disaster with
malicious links.
Users searching on “most recent earthquake in Japan” may encounter some malicious links to fake anti-virus software, Trend Micro
researchers said March 11. Malware writers used black-hat search engine
manipulation techniques to push these links to the top of the search results,
according to a post on the company’s Malware
Blog.
“We immediately monitored for any active attacks as soon as news broke
out, and true enough we saw Web pages inserted with key words related to the
earthquake,” Norman Ingal, a threat response engineer at Trend Micro,
wrote.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the
strongest in the country’s history, hit the Pacific Ocean
at around 2:46 p.m. local time March 11. The earthquake caused extensive damage
in Sendai, the city on the country’s
northeast coast that is nearest the epicenter, and triggered 20-foot-tall
tsunamis and caused widespread fires all along the Japanese east coast. Other
tsunamis triggered by the quake hit Hawaii
and another is heading for the West Coast of the United
States.
For more, read the eWEEK article: Japan Earthquake News Already Hit by SEO Poisoning.